The All Blacks’ knowns and unknowns

In February 2002, US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld made this fateful statement: “There are known knowns – things that we know that we know. There are known unknowns – that’s to say, things we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns – things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Opinion was divided over whether Rumsfeld, who’d been asked about the lack of evidence to sustain the charge that Iraq was supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups, was spouting mock-profound twaddle or had nailed a philosophical truth. In hindsight it seems he was ...

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